An Interview with Jean- Pierre Bekolo

Postcolonial Text, Vol 4 No 1 (2008) The Challenges of Aesthetic Populism: An Interview with Jean- Pierre Bekolo Akin Adesokan Indiana University In the early 1990s, a young Cameroonian director, Jean-Pierre Bekolo, stormed the annals of African filmmaking with a stylish urban comedy, Quartier Mozart. This fast-paced story about sexual politics in a Yaoundé neighborhood was edited on the template of the musical video, a genre in which Bekolo had worked briefly before turning to filmmaking. Quartier Mozart was widely praised for its iconoclastic attitude, considered refreshing in a filmmaking tradition which had formalized cultural identity and the politics of self-representation into aesthetic concerns. The form of Bekolo’s work encouraged critics to compare him to Senegalese Djibril Diop Mambety (d. 1998), another filmmaker who, twenty-years earlier, had similarly redefined African cinema with his first work, the magnificent Touki-Bouki (1973). The film was so reflexive in its awareness of contemporary cinema that comparisons with the style of black American director Spike Lee became just as relevant. Such critical comments did not produce an “anxiety of influence” in the young director, who openly and repeatedly declared his interest in the works of Mambety, about whom he, Bekolo, shot a documentary film, Grandmother’s Grammar, in 1996. Four years after Quartier Mozart, Bekolo produced and directed Aristotle’s Plot (1996), his commissioned entry in a series sponsored by the British Film Institute to mark the centenary of cinema. Other directors in the series included Stephen Frears, Bernardo Bertolucci, Martin Scorsese, and Jean-Luc Godard. In this film, Bekolo uses the genre of action film to question the rationale of mimesis, the Aristotelian plot of the title, which has overdetermined the practice of storytelling, in Hollywood and elsewhere. The confident mix of aesthetic populism and critical, even auterish, staging of conceptual issues in African and contemporary filmmaking has become Bekolo’s style. For him, a film has to entertain in the traditional sense, but without sacrificing an awareness of its place within a vast, diverse but persistent effort to form and transform the practice of African filmmaking. This is a complex but productive intellectual position within an artistic tradition noted for its divisions, factions, and labels.1 The commitment is pursued further in Les 1 Among such labels are “cinema de calebasse” or “cinema a là National Geographic,” in which “the beautiful images serve to fix Africans as exotic savages” (Diawara 394); Saignantes (2005), a beautifully photographed film about two femme fatales who set out to rid their country of its corrupt and sexually obsessed male politicians. It is a hybrid sci-fi-action-horror film set in the year 2025, and again, the director uses the opportunity to discursively explore the forms of cinema and of African politics. Bekolo’s other directorial credits include Boyo (1988), Un pauvre blanc (1989), and Mohawk People (1990). This interview was conducted on April 29, 2006, in New York City. Adesokan: Let’s start with your new film, Les Saignantes. It is a funny film, I think, especially if you think back to those scenes about eating the SIG’s body, with the mortician mistaking the corpse’s foot for his own beer bottle. There are many more of that kind of stylish touch in the film, so the question is this: What accounts for the conception of the mise-en- scene? Why did you choose to shoot the entire film under the cover of darkness, and make women the protagonists? Bekolo: Right, let me begin with the fact that I gave women a central role in the film. I had the idea that if I focused on women, I would really touch on very sensitive issues in society. I was trying to make a film about Cameroon, and so it was important to bring up the issue of women’s relationship with men in power. That is a sensitive issue, and it would seem more interesting than if the central characters were to be boys. Also, there is a connection between the idea of human corruption and girls, because at an early age they have the experience—earlier than boys—of deciding that, although I don’t love this person, he has something that I want, and I can sleep with him and get what I want. They feel this at an early age: sometimes thirteen, sometimes sixteen. They are under the pressures of competition; they have to be socially competitive. So, for me it was important to deal with corruption from that angle. Secondly, I would say that girls are at the very heart of the dynamics of what’s going on in society. That is to say that, when people are looking for political positions, the first thing they do is look for girls. It is like a way of securing power, I think. As for the idea of making the film at night, it’s mainly like we’re in a tunnel, and one day there will be light. There will be a new dawn. Right now, things are not positive, and I think that if you look at the film closely, it’s like the girls are trying to get out of hell. The scenario is that things are getting worse, the girls are pushed by events, and the hope is that eventually they will take control of the situation. That is when they resolve to get on with the wake or the funeral. That’s why the film is structured like that. I didn’t want to pass judgment on the girls, to say that what they do is good or bad, because the context is what matters. Also, I didn’t want the film to send a negative message to people who don’t have “cinema d’auteur” versus “cinema of entertainment” (Ngangura Mweze 61); and “‘old’ school” versus “‘new school’” (Akudinobi 93). 2 Postcolonial Text Vol 4 No 1 (2008) a choice. I wanted the film to be more of a relief. Rather than blaming them, I wanted to show how they could get ahead. Because sometimes when you use a formulaic structure, it often comes out with the opposite effect of what you intended. A: I’m also interested in this question of an open-ended structure. For instance, the film asks a series of rhetorical questions about formula, about how to make a horror film, how to film a love story, and so on. My point about this is that, in spite of that template of questioning, this is also a film that’s close to sci-fi, with a futuristic setting. There’s a poster of the film Scream in Chou-Chou’s (one of the two girls) bedroom, for example. So, what’s your view of these standardized genres which you question but also use, especially in the context of contemporary global cinema? B: I would say that, first of all, genre films are part of our culture, as Africans. There’s no doubt about that. But the thing is always not just to use them, but to question them in relation to the choices we have to make in the context of African cultures. It’s a question of how to appropriate the cinema that’s out there, that we’re watching like everybody else. It’s not just about following what’s being done like sheep, because I think it’s all about reaffirming and realizing our own identities. The point is that one can get alienated very easily, because the images out there are powerful and are being constantly driven and distributed. So we have to raise these questions: why am I using the horror film style? Why am I using the sci-fi style? It doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t do it, just to prove that other people prefer to take short-cuts, and I don’t want to join the bandwagon. The typical thing is to say if you use any of the genres, then you have moved African cinema to the next level. But I don’t think there’s any formula about it, except if we really have reflection about it, and wonder why one should make a sci-fi film. For me, the more important question is that every time you talk about Africa you never talk about the future. A: Yes, we’re obsessed with the past, and rightly so, I think . B: Yes, we always talk about the past. So, by setting the film in 2025, it is about creating meaning in relation to the future, not just for entertainment purposes. For instance, one of the rhetorical questions in the film is, How can you make a detective film in a country where you can’t investigate? It’s true that sometimes things come across as caricatures, like when I see an African film where the investigation proceeds just like in an American film. How can you make that kind of film in a situation when information is held back by government officials? The point then becomes to use the genre to raise questions about what concerns us, and it doesn’t really matter whether it’s science fiction, or a horror film, or a detective story. It’s really about our society and where it’s going. One has to be critical about that society while using those genres, so it doesn’t mean that we can’t make a film in those genres. Because, at the end of the day, I’m 3 Postcolonial Text Vol 4 No 1 (2008) making the film, but I don’t want to be going through the reasoning of why while I’m making a film.

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